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Nvidia to purchase Ageia

Physics chip maker gobbled by GPU giant

Graphics chip giant Nvidia is to purchase the last major independent physics house, Ageia. The price and many details of the acquisition aren't being disclosed, but Nvidia said more information will come during the company's quarterly earnings call on February 13.

While separate physics cards like those made by Ageia have been introduced to overwhelming apathy, the company does good business selling its PhysX middleware to game developers.

But who knows, with Nvidia now behind Ageia we could be hearing a lot more about physics cards in the near future.

Nvidia's CEO Jenl-Hsun Huang said the acquisition will "bring GeForce-accelerated PhysX to hundreds of millions of gamers around the world", in the release.

It also puts Nvidia in direct competition with Intel, which purchased physics software Havok last year. Now with the major physics middleware developers eaten up, where does that leave AMD? ®